The Tour has finally arrived for the mountains in the
beautiful Vosges region.
Riding on the success of Nancy’s Chocolate Cake, Gabriel Gate
continued with the baking theme and prepared a Plum Tart from ripe plums he,
ahem, found hanging from over people’s fences in Tomblaine. This tart is very popular in the region but not as widely
known as quiche Lorriane.
Perhaps Gabs was inspired by the giant piece of field
art spotted in stage seven. At first we thought it was Pacman, then a quiche
Lorraine, or was it a lemon tart? Whatever it was I like to call it the ‘field
art tart’ or ‘fieldtart’ for short.
The riders sure appreciated that plum tart for once the 133km
flat hit the Col de la Croix des Moinats and the peloton headed
skyward they were going to need all the energy they could get. They faced two category 2 and a category 3 mountain
climbs and the final 1.8km kicked up at a nasty average gradient of
10.3%. The profile resembled a ski jump the riders would take on in reverse.
It appears Tour organisers have heeded the message of stage
six and got hold of a black kite for release to keep Phil occupied. It turns
out the bird hire shop was out of buzzards and all they had left were a black
kite and some pigeons so the black kite had to do.
Lightning and thunder were forecast which had the riders
cursing whoever came up with the phrase ‘cycling is the new golf’. And the heavens
did open up causing flashbacks to some in the peloton to the misery of the
Giro. The sun managed to peek through but so far the weather’s been worse here
in France than rainy old England.
Contador contemplates his next move
In the end the last survivor of the early breakaway got to
taste victory and an extra slice of the plum tart. Blel Kadri (AG2R-3CPO)
notched up the first stage victory for France and it’s not even Bastille Day
yet.
In the GC contest we were all thinking Rui Contador (Mampre-Taxo) would
start nibbling into Vincenzo Nibali’s (Asstana) lead. By day’s end Contador
only took three seconds. Nibali must be really loving that yellow and is going
to put up one hell of a fight to keep it.
Before I go chapeau to Cheng Ji (Giant-Shimano) the first
ever Chinese rider in the Tour de France. Known as ‘the breakaway killer’, Cheng
has been turning himself inside out all week for Marcel Kitteh.
It’s curious
that for a country that produces practically every bicycle on the planet it’s
taken this long to produce a Tour rider. Then again, China is probably too busy
making bikes than to be riding them.
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